Dialects & Accents (Was Re: Subject-Verb agreement with compound subjects)

[Mike]

> Potioncat:
> I can vouch for Southern accents. That is, there isn't just
> one Southern accent, there are several. 

> (There's no such thing as an 'r' in Lowland accents.)

Mike:
It seems that accents in the US are slowly fading away. 
Sure, regional accents still exist, but not to the degree 
they used to. I often notice a large difference in accents 
between generations even when both generational individuals 
have remained within the same region. They may retain those 
peculiarities like you point out PC, but the overall accent 
keeps getting less pronounced. 

I remember visiting southern Alabama back in the 70s and being 
almost unable to understand a young lady with a syrupy southern 
accent. But talk to someone from there today, someone that has 
still lived there all her life and it won't be near that degree.

What I notice more today is cadence instead of accents. I 
remember my time in west Texas where people there thought 
"y'all" had three syllables. ;-)


> Potioncat:
> Rickman came close, 
> but not quite, in 'Something the Lord Made.'

Mike:
I watched a little bit of December Boys last night. Sorry 
Geoff, Dan Radcliffe wasn't even close with his attempt at 
an Aussie accent. His pronounciation and cadence was markedly 
different than his other young-boy costars. He was not very 
believable as an Australian orphan, or did I miss something 
and he wasn't supposed to be an Aussie-born?